Wanna be an Astronaut?

NASA has released today that it is looking for new astronauts for its 2009 class. Who as a child never thought of becoming an astronaut? I know I had always thought about roaming around the cabin of a space ship; leisurely floating while doing experiments.

There are a few requirements though. To apply you must have a bachelors degree in math, science or engineering. You will also have to be physically fit. The training that is entailed is rather intense, but the benefits are many.

The site lists some various locations you may visit during your training and missions, such as Texas, Florida, California, Russia, Kazakhstan, the International Space Station and the moon.

This is definitely not a quick process. The training and evaluation process can take up to two years! That seems like an awful long time to train for something that you may never get the opportunity to do.

This position is open to all civilians and military. It gives me a little motivation to finish up my bachelors degree...

Set Rovers to "Rove"

According to NASA, the Mars Rovers are now exploring the planet again. It has been six weeks since the rovers have been sent into hibernation mode. Severe dust storms over the planet forced mission planners to halt the exploration until the storm passed. "The clearing could take months," said rover Project Scientist Bruce Banerdt. "There is a lot of very fine material suspended high in the atmosphere."

I think this project is very important to everyone. This is the first time we have had information of this magnitude about another planet. Sure, we have been to the moon, and that gave us a lot of useful information, but this right now is another planet that we can someday hope to colonize. If the presence of water is found, either in liquid or frozen form, you can almost bet that we will be sending a manned team to the surface of Mars.

I hope that if a manned team is sent to Mars, that is done in my lifetime to be able to see it. But, according to the Space Review, "the greatest challenge for Mars missions is getting there and back. The huge masses of propellants needed for the legs of a space mission are significant limitations to feasibility of the mission." Their opinion is that a manned mission to Mars will not be seen before 2040, but more feasibly, 2080. Although, the BBC reported that Europe has plans to send a manned mission around the year 2030.

I guess that I'm a visionary and a geek and I would love to see this science fiction story played out and see us conquer new worlds. In fact, I read Geeknews.net about this article which got me going on this rant. Hopefully the mission will be possible in the years to come.

(The first image was provided by NASA, while the last was provided by Manned Mission to Mars website.)

New Earth

I'm always a fan of science fiction. So when I heard that scientists had possibly located an "Earth-like" planet, I was immediately excited. While I know that we don't have the means to reach the planet, the mere thought of having another habitable planet was intriguing.

The planet, which is named Gliese 581 C, is located in the Libra constellation, 20.5 light years away. For the "un-nerdy" out there, 20.5 light years means that it would take us over 20 years to get to the planet if we were traveling at the speed of light. As we all know, we have not even perfected going to our own moon, let alone anything outside of our solar system.

What amazed me was the way the planet was discovered. It was not found in the traditional sense that most people think of astronomy. They used a sensitive instrument to identify a planet's signature tugging on the gravitational field of a star. To me it sounds like a plausible way to locate a planet, but how can they be so sure it would be habitable? According to scientists, they take the type of star that the planet is orbiting and are able to calculate the amount of heat that the star gives off and at what distance a planet would have to be to make it habitable for Humans.

Gliese 581 C is about 1.5 times bigger than Earth and orbits around its star in 13 days. Scientists believe that this planet has great potential to hold liquid water to sustain life. Already this has been seen as a target for NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder, a space based program to locate planets of interest; unfortunately, the program is about a decade away from reality.

I wish that we had the means to explore this planet already. Space and distant planets has always had a certain allure. Maybe it will be possible for me to live long enough to see long distance space travel, although I doubt it. I'll just have to settle for Star Trek.